Submitted by mckoss on Tue, 12/02/2008 - 10:59.
Every Tuesday morning at 8:30 you can find about a dozen local Seattle startup entrepreneurs at Louisa's Cafe who get together for an Open Coffee. This morning was my first time to attend, though we've been promoting the event on StartPad.org all year (the time has generally not worked for me).
But I have to say it was a great experience. I got to personally chat with 3 or 4 people that I had not met before, and saw a couple of familiar faces (I didn't get a chance to talk with Andy Sack, who started the tradition, and attends 90% of them himself).
Among the interesting people I met:
- Quinlan Miller - He's a local teacher and writer who is a new entrepreneur. He's passionate about building a service to help people put together photography and writing to create printed books. This was his first coffee as well, and he's looking for potential partners and general advice on how to move his business along.
- Stephen Huson - Just recently in town from Boston, I was happy to meet a fellow MIT alum (we graduated just one year apart!). He's currently President of Autotegrity - an automotive lead generation business. It was really fascinating to hear about this business - and the sophistication needed to manage 100's of thousands of search terms to generate qualified leads for their automotive networks (new, used, financing, etc.). He's looking to get connected in town and find opportunites to join a going concern that could use his business development expertise.
Seattle "fixtures" - Josh Meyer (Seattle Lunch 2.0), Buzz Bruggeman (Active Words), and Andy Sack (Founders Co-op) were there as well.
I will definitely be returning to Open Coffee. From my sample, it's an interesting group of people and a great casual networking event.
